08/18/2026
๐๐๐๐๐ ๐ก๐ข๐ง๐๐ฆ ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ ๐ง๐๐ ๐๐๐๐ | ๐ฅ๐ผ๐ฎ๐ฑ ๐ช๐ผ๐ฟ๐ธ, ๐ฃ๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ ๐
Greetings, friends and prospective buyers. Welcome to the inaugural edition of ๐๐ช๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฅ ๐๐ฐ๐ต๐ฆ๐ด, wherein I attempt to document, in my own meandering way, what it has been like to own more than 500 acres of wild mountain land and recovering habitat.
Life on this remarkable, rugged landscape is a lot like life at large, but with greater density. Intervals of work and rest, elation and struggle, defeat and triumph, punctuated by unexpected discoveries, deep quiet, and moments sublime. All of which can occur in a single afternoon.
Today we enter ๐ช๐ฏ ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฅ๐ช๐ข ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด, with road work.
While I have owned and worked this land for several years, I have not been a particularly faithful chronicler of my own doings. Yet even a hermit like me can recognize the value of sharing a story. And where those places not yet captured by our modern socio-technological vectors are concerned, we must always enter "in the middle of things." Nature, to paraphrase Empedocles, is a circle whose center is everywhere.
In the images and brief, unremarkable video (in the comments), I have returned to the old access road after leaving it untended for a handful of seasons. What is remarkable is how insistently the land has reasserted itself. Of particular note, this swath of hillside transposed onto the road and teeming with vegetation, as if God had scooped up a handful of mountainโtrees and allโand casually glopped it down smack-dab in the center of the roadway, wholly intact. A consequence of last season's storms.
I don't know if it's human nature or merely my own particular nature to wonder at the deeper purpose of such things. What am I meant to learn from this dense knot of ecology and living process now blocking my way? Metaphors abound.
Yet as I crest the troublesome knoll and see the road beyond thick with blackberry and wild lemon balm but otherwise undisturbed, I recall that down this road "a piece" (as they say) โ a road built not in this century or the last; a road cut into a steeply wooded gorge by people whose names history has forgotten in order to travel from a place, now fading away, to another place now submerged beneath the surface of a lake... yes, just up ahead of us on this narrow, winding remembrance โ the land opens up and the trees pull back on a sudden, sunbathed glade.
You arrive. And it really does feel like the center of something profound.
On one side, the terrain falls steeply away and we are eye-to-eye with the tops of trees. On the other, it rises just as swiftly, the bases of trees above us as high as trees and careering skyward from there. At the clearingโs edge, the valley descends, thickly wooded and beckoning, its perils hidden as the unreclaimed road slips from the glade and downward again into growth, old and new.
And finally, behind us, the road recently traveled. A shaded, gently-sloped ๐ข๐ญ๐ญรฉ๐ฆ emerging from around a corner of the dappled wood like an advertisement of heaven.
I call it a glade, but that does not do justice to the marvelously paradoxical nature of it. A peculiar admixture of polarities that coexist here like a superposition of quantum states: simultaneously "above" and "below," open and secluded, resonant and deeply quiet, close and far away. A destination and, more poignantly, a ๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ. A place where one feels obliged to contemplate setting down roots.
I recall the first time I stepped into that space. How it stole my breath, coming, then as now, after a long stretch of road work. And a fragment of a poem comes to mind, unbidden. A blunt appraisal of the oftentimes frictive relationship between meaning and effort, love and work.
๐๐ถ๐ต ๐ธ๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ ๐ต๐ณ๐บ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ
๐ต๐ฐ ๐ฃ๐ฆ ๐ง๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ง?
๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ญ๐ช๐ท๐ช๐ฏ๐จ? ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฎ๐ช๐ณ๐ข๐ค๐ถ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ด
๐ต๐ข๐ด๐ฌ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ช๐ต?
Here then is a promise of reconciliation: of work and respite; struggle and relief; defeat and triumph. Here is the unexpected discovery. The imponderable quiet. The sublime.
These are the places and experiences I wish to share with you.
(Stay tuned for Part II - The Glade)
